Archived Comparison
From the August 1999 Issue of Car and Driver
TESTED
We at Car and Driver are sadly aware that younger readers view several editors here as, well, old farts, hopelessly mired in the automotive past as new trends threaten to pass us by at speeds that would twist our turtlenecks and wrinkle our Sansabelt slacks.
This point is driven home by confoundingly frequent reader letters and e-mails—some containing correct spellings, giving us all hope for the future of public schools—that point accusing fingers at those of us who actually remember the name of that backup group Paul McCartney used to play with. We can picture you there at the keyboard of your iMac, forefinger tapping your nose ring for inspiration, as you whip out a pithy note insisting that your nitrous-sniffing slammed Honda Civic is the future, and that the gas-guzzling V-8s we hold so dear are dinosaurs.
Hey, that hurts. We watch Tom Green on MTV. We laugh at Regis, wince at Kathie Lee. We feel Felicity's pain. We listen to Barenaked Ladies. What, you think you discovered Zippy the Pinhead?
But on this V-8 thing—we gotta agree to disagree. Several of us sitting around at lunch were talking about great exhaust sounds (our lunches really are as exciting as you imagine!) when we almost unanimously agreed that we grew up listening to the American V-8, and to us, that was the sound of power.
Unanimously, except for a fresh-faced road warrior who drives an old Acura Integra. "When I think of the sound of fast cars," he offered, "I think of, you know, like, really tuned four-cylinders."
Ah, youth.
All this introspection turned our attention to the trio of throwbacks, the keepers of the flame: the Ford Mustang, the Chevy Camaro, the Pontiac Firebird. They meet the LAF criteria—loud, affordable, fast. We felt it was time to revisit these pony cars and see how well the idea of rear-wheel-drive V-8s has fared.
So we ordered up the hottest stuff: Ford's new-for-'99 SVT Mustang Cobra, the Chevrolet Camaro Z28 SS, and the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Send us the fastest models available from our local dealers, we said. Manual transmissions, we demanded (they still make those, right?). And while you're at it, chop the tops. We want to feel the wind rushing through (what is left of) our hair. It'll make us feel young again!
As long as we can get home by 10 p.m., and be in bed by 11.
We drove the trio down to Honda's Transportation Research Center in Ohio for testing, which included top-speed blasts around the 7.5-mile oval. Then we went to GingerMan Raceway in western Michigan, an 11-turn road course where we spent the better part of a day thrashing the three cars.
And then we summoned a fellow old fart, a literal graybeard, who graciously set aside his walker and lapped the three cars for us (see sidebar "How a Pro Rates These Pony Cars"). That particular graybeard was Paul Gentilozzi, 49, the 1998 Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am champion, who started 1999 with a win at the Long Beach Grand Prix, resoundingly kicking the collective butts of a bunch of snot-nosed youngsters.
Sound interesting? Read on.
